The past two days have been filled with anxiety and excitment. Excitment because we all can’t wait to get back to work and make some money but anxiety because things have been turned upside down.

Our foreman will not be returning to work because of his torn MCL. So we will all either be split up into new crews, hopefully put in with a crewboss that we don’t know but who seems like a sweet dude. Some of our crew are leaving early because of this and none of us are too excited.
We are here to plant and I will suck it up if worse comes to worse but if we do get the crewboss that none of us want i’m worried about fights and not getting tree’s when we need it or not knowing whats going on with tree prices etc etc. From what i’ve heard this person is not the greatest rookie foreman.

Banff was a blast for the most part. We camped all week and I got to meet up with old friends. That place is such a fairytale. Beautifull on the outside but it has a subtle darkside to it. It was great to see old friends and it was so much fun hanging out with my close friends from back home. Snuck into a bar for La St. Jean which was sweet and ate so much junk food.

Foreman drama aside, i’m very excited to get back to work. There is something to soothing about tree planting. You put your bags on, turn your music on and go! Summer contract looks a bit short this year though so i’m thinking about doing a week of work afterwards. That extra 500$ or so could go a long way…especially since my way home will consist of 1 plane ride and 3 buses.

See you in a week.

What a crazy 2 shifts! I cannot even explain or begin to remember half of what went on.
I can telll you though that spring plant is over! I’m in Prince George waiting for my 10pm bus to Banff.

The first of 2 shifts started off with us visiting of huge waterfall lost in the woods. I’ve never seen something so big before. It obviously doesn’t compare to say, victoria falls but since i’ve never been to victoria falls, it blew my mind.

The first shift was actually pretty uneventfull now that I think about it. The block that we got lost trying to find that I wrote about in my last post but sort of sweet. I broke my PB on it! I planted 2105 tree’s. Considering that only 2 or 3 rookies last year broke 2000 tree’s, i’m pretty stoked on it. But tree planting is hardly a satisfying job because my only thought afterwards was, “I could have so gotten 2200!”

We almost got to go on a helicopter! We were told that we could but at the last minute they made us walk in and they sent in all our tree’s and bags with the helicopter. That block turned into such a gongshow. We planted 18 000 tree’s on that day only to find out at the end that we only needed to plant certain coloured area’s but we had started planting the entire block.
We went back two days later without a helicopter and tried finishing it up. Unfortunately 1 bagup in our forman flipped the quad and tore his MCL! And on the third day we tried finishing it our quad fell over a cliff!

The good news about this week was that my good friend Bronson flew in and started working! It’s nice to have a familiar face here but weird to see it in an unfamiliar place.
He broke 1000 tree’s on his third day!

The last two days of this shift were also gong shows! We went to this sweet block and I raced a checker. I did a 330 tree bagup in 45-50minutes! I almost died at the end but it was fun to plant while running and jumping.
Yesterday was intense. We woke up to rain. Driving to our first block we hit a snow storm. We finished out block and went to the first overflow block(when a contract is at it’s end, everyone in sent to an overflow block to plant the rest of the tree’s) during the drive it was sunny outside. Once we got to the block it hailed and then rained for most of the day. It was a painfull day. No one knew what was going on and we all just wanted to go back to camp and eat.
The 2nd overflow was worse but so much fun. The land was creamy and every crew was there. People were jumping each others lines and I raced people and the tree’s were so bad and the density was horrible but we all wanted to go home. By the time we got home it was 10pm.

So now it’s our week off and i’m headed towards Banff. Summer plant looks like it’s going to be hard work but it’s going to be so money!

Hope everyone’s summer is going well and I will update soon!

Hello folks! What a week.
Sorry for the lack of updates but we ended up in Vanderhoof last week and that town has no internet access.

Where do I start? Well we moved camp again. This time we are closer to Vanderhoof on the Kluskus road. My tent faces a giant meadow with a river flowing the middle of it. So amazing.
Last week was the beginning of the gong show. We had a 14 hour day! 14 hours of non-stop planting. And to make it worse we were planting a giant gully. We didn’t get home till 9:30pm.

We then moved camp in roughly 5 hours and went to Vanderhoof. What a shit town. I normally love small shit towns but this one was beyond me. I think my distaste for it comes from the fact that I ate Oreo’s and Strudels of a day and a half because there was nothing else for me to eat. Although I learnt from that mistake and i’ve started buying soup and veggie dogs for my days off.

All was good and this week started out well enough until about two days ago. We woke up and finished a block that we weren’t able to finish the night before(because it would have been another 9pm night) and I got 150 tree’s into the ground. We then drove to our new block but got lost. On our way we popped a tired. We changed the tired but it was also flat. Jess drove back to camp and came back two hours later with a new tired that didn’t fit. So we all pile into the suburban but we still can’t find the block. Finally at 4:30pm we threw our arms up and spent the rest of the day in camp.
Yesterday went well on the planting side but our truck’s radiator blew, it got a flat, the burb got a flat and the quad’s two front tired went flat.

This is tree planting for you! And it also rained all week.
I wish I could write more but my time is about to expire. I hope all is well and much love to everyone.